


Significance

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Brief Mention of Suicide, Fighting, Gen, M/M, Working Out Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harold and Nathan express a lot of their frustration with each other; Nathan muses on the importance of relevance and irrelevance. </p><p>Set in the middle of Zero Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Significance

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to see it as shippy or not shippy, pretty sure it can be either.  
> My apologies for some of Nathan's inner monologue; this feels like the most self-righteous white dude fic I've ever written. 
> 
> "I have looked into the faces of real monsters, Mrs. Drake. What I see here are two people who stopped talking to one another, whose frustration turned to hatred. Although, unlike other couples, you’ve opted for murder instead of divorce; I suppose I should commend you for being so goal-orientated. No, no you don’t look like monsters. In fact, you used to look like you were very much in love."  
> — Harold Finch, _Til Death_

"What do you want from me?"

"The truth."

"Is that all?"

Harold looks up, finally, from beneath those far-seeing glasses of his that magnify his eyes by five. "What more could I want from you, Nathan?"

Nathan stops pacing, turns and leans against the desk, folding his arms. "You don't want to know what I've been doing all this time? Don't want to  _see_  what your machine can do?"

Just guarded eyes in a guarded face. No surrender, not a single facet of reluctance in that pale blue study. Nathan is sick of looking at him, because he can only find the determination and stubbornness that he spent so many years giving into. There's no compromise here. He knows; in some far corner of his mind he's  _always_  known that.

"Well," says Nathan, "Olivia doesn't know I'm here. My secretary thinks I'm away on business and thinks I should take a day off." He laughs; Harold doesn't join in. 

He doesn't even need to say it again. There are question marks surrounding The Truth in the air between them.

"Just before we sent it off," Nathan relents, arms unfolding like they're afraid and his hands are running into trouser pockets. "You left early... or I stayed late." 

It takes him a moment of trying to word it in the best way, where his tongue almost ties itself in circles starting and stopping again. "I brought it back online. Just for an hour or so, while I wrote the program." He runs his hand through the back of his hair, looking anywhere but at Harold. "It's a contingency function. It sends me the numbers-"

"So you can save them," Harold answers, in a measured tone.

"Yes." Nathan looks down at the library floor. "Or I try to, at least."

"You did this all on your own," comes the unexpected response, and Nathan would be offended but if he took offence to everything Harold has ever said over the years, he wouldn't be here.

"No one else. Just me."

There's a beat of silence, before Harold's chair scrapes across the floor and he stands, looking at Nathan, then looking away, thinking, maybe thinking out loud. "And you didn't consider working with a partner?"

He doesn't sound judgemental, just.. methodical, hitting all of the options. Still. "You made it quite clear that you wouldn't be supportive. I couldn't count on you, so - no, I haven't found anybody else. I wouldn't know where to go  _looking._ "

Harold eyes him over the rims of his glasses, acknowledging Nathan's bitterness without either of them having to say a word about it. Sometimes, Nathan thinks they know each other far too well.

Rather than admonish him for an outburst they both know Nathan already regrets, or direct the conversation into differing ways that he could have found another person to help him by now, Harold takes a step towards the board. There are four photos, two newspaper articles and some scribbled lettering outlining each person's manner of danger.

Reaching out a hand to take hold of a photo's edge, Harold says: "You're right. I wouldn't have been supportive of your idea, or wished to participate in any way. I still believe-" Here he turns his head, glances at Nathan for a brief but stern moment. "-that your actions have compromised the machine. That won't change."

"But.." he turns back, and Nathan can see his thumb close over the edge of Derren Foster's photograph. "Perhaps this function can serve us some useful purpose."

Nathan's mouth is pressed together in a line so hard it's painful. After Harold's latest woeful attempt at humanity, he tries to interject, but again they know each other too well and Harold turns to interrupt him before he can protest.

"Your end would continue as before, of course. No sense in interrupting an operation." They look at each other evenly, both defiant in their own right, though Harold's defiance is more subtle and anyone would see Nathan's in an instant.

"But?" He feels he might as well say it.

Harold turns half-away again. "You would need to find a partner. It's silly, having you both as the instigator and the perpetrator." His eyes, blue and black, flick back up. "You don't really think you can handle a gun, do you?"

It's Harold, a pissed off Harold, and it's almost too much, but Nathan has spent thirty long years wandering Wren's verbal corridors and has built up enough callouses on his feet to step on barbs like this one. He's still leaning on the desk, but rather than eagerly answer, because Harold may get his attention but he'll get his heart too, he glances away and tucks his chin in towards his chest.

It seems Harold's satisfied, but Nathan has something more. "I've already saved five people," he says, just as the gaze on him wavers, "With a gun; some of them. But you know, you might be right. There were another seven that I couldn't get to in time."

Nathan turns on the desk towards him, arms digging so tightly together that their cross threatens to restrict his breathing. "But what have  _you_  done? What have you ever said, or done, to help? When does it stop being about  _you?_ "

 _"Excuse me?"_  

Oh, he's done it now, he's stepped over that invisible line they never tread and Harold is looking at him like he wants to spit venom. 

"You never call. You never visit. You came to my apartment _once,_  in the last three years, and that was to tell me you were going to propose to someone I'd never met. You treat me like your goddamn mother-in-law that you'd do anything to get away from, not your friend, and every single time I come to you for help, you find some way of rubbing it back in my face."

Harold takes an infinitesimally small step forward. 

"I wouldn't dream of making it more difficult for you, Harold. After all, you're the better man; you're the one with a fiancée, a job, some fucking stability in your life." Nathan can see him bristle, wants to make it happen for once, just for one single time in his life he wants to make Harold act, rather than bend and react to him. "Am I interrupting? Wouldn't want to miss your opportunity to rub my nose in it this time, would you?"

"Shut  _up,_ " Harold hisses.

Nathan leans forward, still just slightly taller than him, even though he's the one perched on a desk. "Don't you want to? For one second, why not? I failed to save seven people, go on, you can ball your fists and still be self-righteous."

Harold hits him - a cuff, really - with his fingers curled inward and only a glancing blow, to his shoulder of all places. 

Nathan's arms uncross in disbelief. "The fuck was that?"

Harold looks startled, too, like he didn't expect his own reaction, so Nathan has time to take hold of his forearm, and smile. "You really need to learn how to punch."

He doesn't expect the one to his gut, sharp and vicious, that doubles him over and loosens his hold on Harold's wrist.

"It's always about you, Nathan," Harold says, in an even, vengeful sort of way as Nathan recovers from the blow. When a knee lifts in an attempt to block him, Harold turns his palm and slams it back down onto the desk, pinning it there. He leans in. "We're not very alike, you and I, despite what you think you know or think you can do better than me. We don't have the same priorities."

He doesn't bother shaking off Nathan's hand, but grabs the other when it makes a feint towards his throat and twists the captive grip, holding all four of their hands at Nathan's collar. "I don't have a drinking problem," he reminds him, lowly, "I don't cheat, I don't betray my friends' trust-"

"No, you wouldn't," Nathan says, "You push them so far away they wouldn't even have a reason to come back."

"- _and_  there are so many days that I wonder why you're an exception to that rule. What makes you different, Nathan?" He clenches his grip around the shirt collar, pulling Nathan forward. "If you loathe me so much, why are you still here?"

Nathan doesn't answer; for a moment they're just frozen in silence broken only by their perpetual breathing. Then, with a movement of his neck to escape some of the pressure constricting it, Nathan looks away. "You tried to get rid of me." His voice is different, more serious, like the hands at his throat are brushing his larynx. "I broke my word, but I couldn't.. couldn't stand back and watch those people die." He lifts his chin, flicks his hair out of his eye. "It could be any one of us, did you ever think of that?"

Harold stares at him, hawkish and sly, but much smaller than Nathan. If Nathan really wanted to, he wouldn't be on the loser's end of this fight, and again he can see the constant Why circling in his eyes; both of them realising it's visible at the same time. 

In a moment, Harold drops his hands, letting Nathan go and stepping back while still keeping his eyes on him. "Don't be ridiculous," he mutters. "They don't know about me, and they have no reason to harm you."

"Not yet," Nathan says, pulling his creased collar away from his throat and leaning one hand heavily on the desk behind him.

It seems to disquiet Harold in some way, because he turns his back and looks supposedly at the photographs again.

"Would a threat to one of us be relevant, or irrelevant, do you think?" Nathan asks him, and yeah he knows he's an asshole, but he wants to see what Harold will say.

Naturally, he doesn't answer.

"Look-" and Harold does; he turns his head and watches Nathan again, who raises his hands in a gesture of peace. "I knew you wouldn't agree. And I know that's it's always going to be like this, between us; I haven't been your friend for thirty years for nothing." 

He moves his fingers, like they're an extension of the thought process his brain is going through and his mouth is trying to admit to it. "Really... This is a suicide pact, if we're being honest here. Either I give up on trying to do some good, or I take a bullet to the brain from someone hell-bent on causing me harm. I'm not unaware of that."

Nathan stands up, one hand unconsciously going to his abdomen. He hovers between the board of Irrelevant numbers and the library hall, drifting in the middle. "But I know that part of you doesn't want to join me because it's afraid, and selfish; it thinks that it's too valuable to throw away on pointless lives."

He steps forward, slowly, and then can't move any closer, because Harold Wren is an electromagnet so powerful he could shift the world at its core and Nathan is daring to reach him. "Your life is valuable, Harold. And I'm sorry I can no longer share it with you."

It seems that Harold has nothing left to say, even uninhibited by the constraints that Nathan usually puts himself under. He should be arguing - would be, normally - Nathan has enough experience with that for a lifetime, but rather than insist they refocus on Harold's idea he's only letting Nathan go, like the realisation that he was the one who split them is smothering any protest.

There's nothing, no persistence, but then- "Important," comes the half-said word when Nathan has turned and is already walking out of the room. He pauses - waits, like he always will.

"It'll be important, if one of us dies," Harold continues, from behind him. "Significant."

"To you, or me?"

"To me," Harold says, and Nathan can sense him moving a little closer; maybe he's just a few feet or so away now. That electrostatic presence is pressing against his boundaries, thin and weak as they are.

Nathan doesn't turn back towards him, just glances at the lower shelves to his right, piled with dusty books and ruined pages dirtied by exposure to the air. He tries to say something, doesn't, then starts again. "I can't move on like you can. I get... stuck. Gather issues, rather than disperse them."

He doesn't feel Harold appear at his elbow until the other man is glancing hesitantly around at his downturned face. Harold seems to wait until Nathan's aware of him before reaching a hand out to gingerly rest on his forearm, gentler than expected. "Let me help you."

There's bitterness welling in his throat and a thousand poisonous barbs that he could spit back in return, things that have dwelled deep in his soul for so long that he wonders if it's even possible to repair what they have left; if either one of them will be able to have a single conversation without breaking it off again, because they hurt too much.

Nathan doesn't have the right words.

Harold gives him a tentative smile. "Maybe we should start with talking."

He can't count the number of times they've argued over the years, the moments they've said things to each other that would level blocks or topple kingdoms, if they were the gods he thinks Harold sometimes believes they are. Maybe the truth is they just weren't meant to meet each other; two great warriors on either side of a battle, running each other down until one flame died or the other.

Maybe he just wishes there was a better explanation for why this is the hardest he's ever fought to stay with someone, to the point where he'll lie and hide just to feel like he's back in the parts of life where he belongs. Maybe there's no excusing what either of them have done, because they both tried to take the world into their own hands.

Maybe he shouldn't be focusing so strongly on the gulf between relevant or irrelevant when he's ignoring the most significant force in his life, and when that force ignores it just as wilfully. Taking something so immensely large as the world into your grasp when you can't even hold your own world is really quite foolhardy, after all.

It's probably beyond time to start talking. Maybe it's time to listen.

"The truth," Nathan says, and Harold waits, looking up at him to work out who's he going to be. "I think it's that I don't know how to live without you, and I can't stand how far apart we  _are-_  because when I'm by myself, I don't know how to pick up my life to where it's supposed to be. I thought I knew, but I don't."

"And you need a little help," Harold says, his presence a steady weight on Nathan's arm.

"Yeah," Nathan says, gaze upturning towards him again. "Yeah, I do."

Harold is quiet for a moment, then says: "We can do that."

There's so much pent-up tension in Nathan; he lets out a shaky breath and finds himself reeling, unsteady and untethered to the ground. He tries to stay in the moment, not to think about gods and warriors and all the times they might depart again, all the ways in which it might not work again. He's so focused that he only comes back to the present when Harold moves.

He has his wrist upturned and his watch on display. "It's... almost eight. Do you have another number?"

"Not today," Nathan says.

Harold smiles, and pats his wrist. "Then we'll go out."

Before Nathan's mystified eyes, Harold heads back to the desk to collect his coat and shrug it back on. "There's a very nice Italian restaurant not too far from here. I'll admit I'm partial to their risotto."

Nathan is still surprised, but after that outburst, this is the first time that he's felt a little more himself again. "Is this where you go on your days off?"

"Not always," says Harold, and darts past him before Nathan can notice the entirety of his amusement. 

"Get out of here," Nathan calls after him, and goes back to his desk to grab his laptop and anything else essential, to put in the library's safe. By the time he gets down to street level, Harold is bundled up in a scarf and is blowing on his cupped hands to keep warm.

It's so similar to one night, thirty years ago, when it was winter at MIT and Boston had a blizzard warning, except back then it had been Nathan dragging Harold out into the cold and he had taken just as much convincing to come away.

Standing here, at the southern entrance to the library, the image he's come out to is almost exactly the same, and he resolves to ask Harold if he remembers that day as soon as they get to somewhere warm.

And maybe all of this  _is_  about talking and listening, or significance and insignificance, but all that Nathan can think right now is that he's glad he's not alone. He's set his life to helping people he'll never know, and he'd make the same choice again and again if he could, but there's nothing ever quite like mattering to someone. He feels like he may be able to live with this, when he's not chasing after shadows or lurking somewhere else.


End file.
